If All We’re Buying Are Bricks and Mortar

Over lunch last week, a Realtor partner and dear friend was talking with me about a recent blog about staging entry areas.  In keeping with the purpose of “to be continued”, this friend added another insight that also makes a good case for home staging so let’s continue that conversation together. 

If all we're buying are bricks and mortar, just about any house will do.  Instead, we are buying emotion, dreams, and possibilities. 

Think about it - in buying emotion, dreams, and possibilities, we want to imagine our best selves in those spaces.  We want to envision comfort and care; laughter and joy; simplicity and ease.  We want to write more chapters of our life story as we add our character into the story of this house. 

In buying emotion, dreams and possibilities there are also things we do not want.  We do not want someone else’s messiness.  We do not want to repair, replace or upgrade someone else’s problems.  We do not want stress or complication.  We do not want to have to look past the clutter and confusion of someone else’s lifestyle.

Home staging helps proactive realtors and savvy sellers bring out the emotion, dreams and possibilities of their listed house.  In its simplest terms, home staging involves making sure your house is cleaned, groomed and properly outfitted.  Home staging accentuates the home’s best features.  Home staging provides a nice, easy and consistent use of space and movement.  A professionally staged house appeals to as many buyers as possible. 

Regardless of the size or price range of a house, my objective is to find the possibilities in that house.  I am looking for unique features and finding possible ways to accentuate them for the potential buyer.  I am analyzing those unusual spaces that buyers find difficult to understand upon first glance and creating possible functional uses for those spaces.  In the end, my mission is to help the potential buyer see how they could dwell in the possibilities of this house!

When I stage a house, I make sure that it is ready for its “first date” with each prospective buyer walking in the door.  And the results speak for themselves.

As my friend said so eloquently, we buy emotions, dreams and possibilities.  And I could not agree more.

Dwell in possibilities 

Cindy

Staging Living Rooms and Family Rooms – Focal Points and Flow

Focal points and flow are key elements of staging each and every house.  In many houses, the living room and/or family room contains one or more focal points as well as benefit or suffer from flow.  Focal points and flow are also where professional home stagers earn their fees.  It is where the art and magic of home staging is most obvious and valued.

Focal points are permanent elements that make this house unique and distinct from the other homes on the market in this price range. 

·         Does this house have a great view? 
·         Is there a fireplace and how can we draw the buyer’s attention to this unique feature of this house? 
·         Are there any other architectural features (such as built-in cabinets, ceiling beams, and French doors) that we want to highlight?

Once the house’s focal points are identified, the home staging task is to show off the house’s potential by drawing the potential buyer’s attention to them.  And this is where my creativity, experience, resources and inventory can be invested in helping sell the house quicker and for the highest price possible.

Flow generally refers to the even pace in which one moves from space-to-space and room-to-room in a house.  The flow of a house can be a subtle characteristic of a house if done well but can be jarringly obvious if not done well.

·         Do the rooms and space feel connected? 

·         Is there a choppy and broken feeling as you move from room-to-room? 

·         Does the eye flow across a room or are there things like furniture placement, colors or clutter that get in the way? 

·         Are the colors consistent from room-to-room?

While poor flow is obvious, I believe that creating an even pace with movement from space-to-space takes the experience and expertise of a professional home stager.  Building subtle flow is a clear example of the art of home staging.

Check out our website for examples of how we transformed living rooms and dining rooms through the magic of focal points and flow - http://www.transitions-home-staging.com/Living-Room---Family-Room-1.html.   

With a professionally staged house, buyers imagine living in that house and making it their home.  A buyer will imagine their best selves living in the home.   

Isn’t this why we staged the home in the first place? 

Remember to dwell in possibilities! 

Cindy

Friday Treat – Remodelista – Sourcebook for the Considered Home

Julie, Janet, Sarah, Francesca and Christine are a group of friends who share “eerily similar design sensibilities; a collective design DNA”.  They live in California (Mill Valley and San Francisco), New York (Brooklyn Heights) and Connecticut (Niantic).  They are editors of Remodelista- Sourcebook for the Considered Home (http://remodelista.com ) and this week’s Friday treat.

The “Remodelistas” believe “the best advice comes from like-minded friends.”

“We’ve survived a dozen remodels among us, and after years of midnight consultations and email debates weighing the merits of a particular cabinet pull, we created an online forum for sharing our finds. Why go looking for the perfect faucet if your style-savvy neighbor has found The One?”

Where else can you find the best drying rack; Iman Deco black chairs; photos of Scott Lewis’s San Francisco landscape architecture; or, Wauw Design from Denmark (hand-thrown pieces from porcelain; specifically, delicate conical lights and glazed tabletops pieces)?  You can browse by room and find their recommendations on everything from kitchen furniture to tile and countertops; bath linens to toilet paper holders; coat racks to lounge chairs.  You can get inspired by “stealing a look” such as Canoe in Portland or Myles Henry’s Liquor Bar.

If you had a fire in your house, what would be the ten kitchen tools you could not live without and would need to rescue from the flames?  The “Remodelistas” have their list for ten simple low-tech implements for stirring, grinding, measuring, peeling, grating everyone should have in their kitchens (http://remodelista.com/posts/10-easy-pieces-editors-essential-kitchen-tools).

The possibilities are endless when you start perusing Remodelista as it is chocked full of ideas, experiences, and recommendations from coast-to-coast and around the world.  They make it easy “for our similarly inclined readers by offering an edited, screened, preapproved selection of our greatest hits.”  See what I mean at http://remodelista.com/

 

Dwell in possibilities but make sure to enjoy yourself in the process.

Cindy

Why Stage the Entry Area

I firmly believe that one of most critical staging areas is the entry area.  And the reason is pretty simple.  Buyers make up their mind in the first 30-60 seconds upon entering a house.  The rest of the time in the house is spent justifying their first emotional reaction. 

Entry areas come in all shapes and forms.  From the small closed off “hallway” to the magnificent and open entrance with the grand stairway.  No matter what you have to work with, this space has to look great.  And, it can be done.

There is a simple technique that I use with sellers who are on the fence about having their house staged and/or updated.  I ask the sellers to stand with me at their front door entry and tell me what they see.  Often, there is a soft groan as they begin to look at their house through the eyes of a potential buyer.  They typically come to the realization that the home that they love could benefit from professional help.

As a stager, I must make sure that an entry space makes that all important first impression. I ask questions that relate to the senses:

·         Are all areas within sight of the entry visually appealing and is the room well and softly light?

·         Is there a clean and fresh smell?

·         Does the front door hardware have a nice feel and is the air temperature comfortable?

·         Is there a relaxed, warm and peaceful feeling?

Check out the Transitions website for examples of how we stage entry areas to make good first impressions.  Just click on http://www.transitions-home-staging.com/Entry-Ways-I.html  

In summary, the entry area sets the tone for the rest of the home showing.  As we share over and over again, you are never given a second chance to make a good first impression.  With an interesting and inviting entry, the potential buyer begins to see the possibilities of making this house their home. 

Dwell in possibilities! 

Cindy

What’s Selling – “A+ Homes”

I had an interesting conversation this morning with one of my favorite Realtors.  I always learn from her.  She keeps me on my toes and her knowledge of what’s going on in the housing market informs and inspires me. 

This Realtor passed on a statistic about our real estate market based on her experience and the experience of other Realtors.  She said that the houses that are selling now are either deeply discounted foreclosures or “A+ Homes”.  The rest of the homes (roughly 60 percent) are not selling. 

That says to me that in order to sell in this difficult market, a home must be pristine, memorable and priced well.  It must stand out from the crowded market of the “Other 60%”.  It must answer most, if not all, of the questions a prospective buyer has about the form and function of the spaces.  It should be move-in ready if the seller expects a premium price. 

It is easy to describe the “Other 60%” - tired and drab, boring and sad.  Paint colors that were intended to look rich too often make the house dark and dreary.  Furniture is often too large and worn.  Some suffer from outdated kitchens, bathrooms and carpeting.  Others look like every other house that the buyers just visited – nothing unique, nothing memorable. 

In rare cases, some sellers are able to create and maintain an “A+ Home”.  In most cases, the seller needs professional assistance to turn their “Other 60%” house into an “A+ Home”. 

I think in order to transform a house into this category of “homes that are selling”, the home seller is helped dramatically by having a Dream Team consisting of a Realtor, a professional home stager and other professional resources (painters, plumbers, carpet installers, etc.,).  This team can plan and execute the details necessary to make that house pristine, memorable and priced well.  The end result may appear magical but it is the result of experience, expertise and elbow grease.

The seller also needs to buy into the concept that they may receive the return on their investment if they budget for updates, refreshes and professional home staging.  The process is much simpler when the seller realizes that their house is now a product to market and sell and not the same home it was the day before they decided to sell it.

Selling a house is hard work – for the seller, for the Realtor and, if the seller is savvy, for the professional support team.  But it can be done if the seller is open to the realities of the real estate market and the possibilities of transforming their house into an “A+ Home”.

Dwell in possibilities

Cindy